Two years ago, the trustees who oversee a government fund that supported efforts to re-establish bald eagles on Catalina Island decided the money could be better spent elsewhere.

It was a disheartening development criticized by conservation groups. The funds came from the Montrose Settlements Restoration Program, which grew out of a legal settlement with companies that dumped tons of DDT off the Palos Verdes Peninsula during the 1950s and 1960s.

This pollution was blamed for the disappearance of the bald eagle from Catalina Island. The chemical, which is now banned, worked its way up the food chain and caused the thinning of eagle eggs, making reproduction impossible without human intervention.

Until now.

Over the weekend, two bald eagle chicks were hatched on Catalina – reportedly the first on the island without human help in 50 years. In recent years, other eagles on Catalina were hatched after biologists transferred the parents’ eggs from nests to incubators. The biologists placed dummy eggs in the eagle nests, which were later replaced with the chicks hatched in incubators.

The hatchings in the wild of the Catalina eagle chicks is a milestone for the Institute for Wildlife Studies, which has kept the Catalina bald eagle program on life support since most of the Montrose funds were yanked two years ago. Trustees of that fund regrettably decided that restoration efforts for Catalina eagles were simply not sustainable and opted to concentrate funding to establish bald eagles in the Channel Islands to the north.

Last weekend’s hatching’s would seem to show that DDT contamination of the eagles’ food sources is declining. It suggests that re-establishing bald eagles on Catalina, where a million visitors a year can see the majestic birds, can be done.

Moreover, ensuring that Catalina remains a home for bald eagles allows the island’s many visitors to gain an appreciation for nature and see first-hand the value of restoration efforts. That’s much less true in the Channel Islands, which receive fewer visitors.

The Montrose settlement money was supposed to be used to mitigate the pollution’s effects in this area, which was ground zero for DDT contamination. Re-establishing bald eagles on Catalina is certainly in line with that mission.

Today we’re overloaded with news about species degradation and environmental decline. Renewed hopes for a sustainable bald eagle population off the coast of Los Angeles County is truly something to celebrate and encourage.

That’s why the state and federal officials who oversee the Montrose fund should reverse their decision to pull the $200,000 in annual funding for bald eagle restoration on Catalina. The hatching of the eagles over the weekend is proof that restoration efforts were working.